And the birds were there! The Black-necked Stilts in one section found conditions 

 so much to their liking that they were raising extra-large families, and we took four 

 sets of five eggs each, a notable exception among Shore-birds, whose normal limit is 

 four. Wilson Phalaropes were among those present, and we found and collected two 

 nests of four eggs each, the southernmost breeding record, apparently, for this species 

 in America. Black Terns were swarming, although they did not come to the climax of 

 their nesting before our departure, June 6th. Ducks' nests of five species, viz., Cinna- 

 mon Teal, Pintail, Mallard, Redhead, and Fulvous Tree Duck, rewarded our quite inci- 

 dental search. But the piece de resistance of our Los Banos trip was the nesting of 

 the tricolored Blackbird, (Agelaius tricolor). Many days were spent in a systematic 

 review of nesting conditions among these birds, chiefly in a colony estimated to con- 

 tain upwards of twenty thousand pairs. Thirty-five hundred nests were examined, and 

 from these a series of one hundred sets was chosen, which illustrate every phase from 

 immaculate eggs to examples of freak pigmentation as heavy as that of Xanthocephalus 

 or Euphagus. [This series as it now reposes in the M. C. O. is figured on page 11]. 



The monotony of life in the Los Banos country was further varied by the presence 

 one night of a mysterious visitor, himself an expert oologist. We were bunking as 

 usual in the lee of a haystack some 200 yards from camp, so the visiting brother had 

 things all to himself. Although unblown eggs, of which there were plenty at hand, 

 seemed to be the visitor's preferred diet, he inserted a discriminating snout into such 

 boxes of blown eggs as were not actually nailed or tied, and these he deftly smashed. 

 Among the seventeen sets which the connoisseur — presumably, but not certainly, a 

 skunk — destroyed, was 1/5 American Bittern, and the dearest "baby" runt Blackbird's 

 egg that ever happened, about one-fourth normal size and handsomely marked. 

 Naturally, there was no feast awaiting the visitor the following evening, although he 

 explored the place carefully. The joke of it is, we could not have done a thing to the 

 burglar in our tent, if we had caught him in flagrante delictu. Help yourself, birdie, 

 but please don't fire! 



The experience of the barren days ensuing, June 6-17, will have to be dignified as 

 reconnaissance work. While it is true that a roving oologist gathers few birds' eggs, 

 it is more to the point to note the exceeding dryness of the spring of 1916, which had 

 laid its blight upon the west central portion of California. In traveling from Los 

 Banos to Eureka, in Humboldt County, we learned a good deal about the bird life of 

 the country traversed, and we found a number of nests with young, but we took never 

 an egg. At Elinor, on the Eel River, Bert made a Vaux Swift location, but a morning 

 spent "chopping it out" of a redwood stub discovered only an unfinished nest at the 

 bottom of the shaft and within two feet of the ground. 



At Eureka we got in touch with C. I. Clay and John M. Davis, both excellent field 

 men, and both of whom later entered the service of the M. C. O. By their advice we 

 established our belated June camp near Trinidad Head, in the heart of the Vaux Swift 

 country. Our time henceforth was divided between the search for Vaux Swifts among 

 the stubs of the burned-over section, and the study of the sea-birds upon the rocky islets 

 which lie off Trinidad Head. Upon the latter we found not only the usual run of 

 Western Gulls, Shags, Tufted Puffins, Cassin Auklets and Beal's Petrels, which 

 inhabit all such islands along this coast; but we found a tiny admixture of Fork-tailed 

 Petrels (Oceanodroma furcata) breeding with O. beali on the Off-Trinidad Rock. This 

 was an agreeable surprise, as it constitutes the southernmost breeding station of record 

 for this species. 



With the Vaux Swifts we did not fare so well. After incredible labors climbing 

 stumps and finding nothing, we made a location in a giant stub near camp. This was 

 a redwood "chimney" eighty feet high, devoid of limbs, eight feet in diameter at the 

 base, and not materially less, or not less than six feet, at the point where a devastating 

 fire, seven years before, had hollowed its broken top to an unknown depth. It was a 

 difficult proposition, but by dint of half a day's work with the rope-and-cleat method, I 

 scaled it; and in another half day, June 24th, had worked down on the inside of the 

 congested barrel to find — another empty nest. Too early! 



We certainly could not afford to spend the entire season waiting for a Swift (?) hen 

 to lay her eggs; so we left Vaux's Slow to other hands and made our way across country 

 to Red Bluff and Shasta. En route we encountered the "only heavy summer rainstorm 

 known" in the northern Sacramento Valley. It rained two inches, according to report, 

 on the first day of July, at Sacramento City, and six inches at Dunsmuir, in the Sacra- 

 mento Canyon. This also meant a foot of new-fallen snow at timberline on Mt. Shasta, 

 whither we were bound. 



Page twenty-three 



